“The movie portrays nearly all of Christian Bale‘s Laotian captors and their North Vietnamese allies as subhuman, barely-civilized sadists who live to inflict torture and physical abuse. The paranoia and gaunt frames of the Americans (Bale, Steve Zahn, Jeremy Davies) attest to their brutal treatment, which is no doubt based on reality. Nevertheless, sitting through Rescue Dawn is like watching a war movie made by the Ku Klux Klan.
“Not that I’m surprised by this approach, because the history of movies about the Vietnam War is mostly a history of forgetting: forgetting that the Vietnamese were fighting a war of national liberation; forgetting they were real people; forgetting they had a rich, thousand-year old civilization and had been struggling to overthrow their colonial masters — first the French, then the Americans — for decades.
“For the most part, Vietnam War movies are all about us — the Stars and Stripes — and the ways the war messed with our heads. Thanks to our immersion into the heart of Southeast Asian darkness, we learned the Nature of True Evil, which compelled and even required us to kill everything that moved.
“Rescue Dawnrevels in dehumanization. And it doesn’t just demonize the locals; it conveniently leaves out some essential historical context. For starters, Laos was a neutral country being used by various powers as a proxy in a secret war, a sideshow to the bigger conflict in Vietnam proper. U.S. forces flew an estimated 600,000 secret bombing raids into the country between 1964 and 1973.
“The idea that the Laotians are just a teeny bit pissed at our boy Dieter and his counterparts is [therefore] understandable: They’ve been napalming their fields, slowly starving them to death. I’m not defending their treatment of the prisoners, but the film tends to shuck off this information as if it didn’t exist. The slow-motion bombing montage that opens the film stands apart from the narrative that follows; Herzog never connects the desperate situation of the locals — more than 350,000 of whom perished during the bombing campaign — with the depraved acts of their captives.
“Last year Letters From Iwo Jima set out to humanize the Japanese soldiers who fought during World War II, doing so with compassion and realism. Yet 30 years after the end of the Vietnam War, our enemies, whose crimes pale in comparison to the Rape of Nanking and other atrocities committed by the Japanese, are still portrayed as savages of the first order.
“Is there some kind of half-century moratorium before you can acknowledge your opponents as human beings? Even Sen. John McCain, a POW who famously endured six years of imprisonment and torture, has returned to Vietnam and reconciled with his former enemies. Of course, ‘German’ movies were coming out barely a decade after World War II (see Marlon Brando as a sensitive Nazi in 1958’s The Young Lions), but let’s not even go there — that’s an entire graduate course on racial politics.
Rescue Dawn “is a well-made, compelling film, but I have yet to read a review that mentions anything about its racial and historical context. Are critics just giving its world-class director a pass? Maybe they’ve been so caught up in the story, they’ve forgotten to explore its context? Perhaps they simply accept these crazed Asian stereotypes as givens and don’t even notice them anymore (I’d love to hear what some Asian-film aficionados think of this picture)?”

This is seriously one of the dumber things I’ve ever read. I don’t have time right now to sort through all the bullshit in it, so I’ll leave that to my fellow readers with more time.
Comparing us to the French colonials is certainly the richest piece of crap in this piece. I don’t dispute that we shouldn’t have been there, but the idea that all of Vietnam was fighting a war of national liberation against us is absurd.

MAGGA

Good points which relate to more than just movies. I have heard anti-war protesters talk about the dead americans in Iraq, whick is a horrible and avoidable situation, but the victims on the other side in conflicts are rarely regarded as more than a mild irritant. A western life is always seen as worth ten lives from another place, and western movies reflect this

NYCBusybody

Blah blah blah, racism racism woe-is-me victimization, etc. etc.
What’s the fucking problem here? Would a movie about My Lai be obligated to also show good, upstanding American soldiers, perhaps their wives and children, backgrounds, etc, to give the “other side” of the story? I should hope not. A movie about My Lai, made by a Vietnamese filmmaker, would probably focus on the Vietnamese villagers, then show the Americans come in and go apeshit. And it should, no? I don’t think PC’ers would be whining about that, so what’s the problem showing the Vietcong to be the realistically brutal captors they were in a movie about American rescue?

BurmaShave

Well we’ll see with Oliver Stone’s PINKVILLE, starring Sean Penn. I can only guess it will be a presentation very much as you describe.

D.Z.

“Last year Letters From Iwo Jima set out to humanize the Japanese soldiers who fought during World War II, doing so with compassion and realism.”
If Iwo Jima wanted to depict the Japanese realistically, you’d see them murdering, raping, and experimenting on SE Asians using a pretext of racial superiority similar to the Nazis. The only reason we choose to be more sensitive nowadays is because they got us by the balls, economically. I can’t wait for the day we present the “other” side of Mao’s death squad, too. Oh, wait. ( http://www.darkhorizons.com/news07/070525g.php ) I do agree that we need to get over our hostile depictions of the Vietnamese, though, since they kicked our asses fair and square.

Mgmax, le Corbeau

Herzog is his own cracked self as an artist, and one of the things that means is that when he makes a movie about people at the extremities of existence and civilization, he doesn’t make sure everything’s PC like a good corporate artist would; he doesn’t give a shit about equal time for the aboriginal viewpoint, he’s interested in the extreme experience of his crazed characters, to which the natives are a kind of prop. Is he racist, then? That seems an incredibly simplistic and reductionist way of ending, rather than asking, any questions about his art, since racism means automatic dismissal and ostracism in our society.
Part of 19th century Romanticism was rebellion against Enlightenment and rationality, admiration for the savage, a quest for the “authentic” pre-civilized spirit of various peoples. Is that racist? It certainly can be. Nazism came out of a desire to recreate the supposed pure, pre-Christian German soul in a society cleansed of you-know-who. But there are many gradations. To take one example– would you regard mountain climbing as racist? The idea sounds preposterous. But mountain climbing was essentially a Romantic invention– authentic man against the abyss. And there are 1920s German mountain films that fetishize the self-destructively heroic side of mountain climbing in a way that starts to make you a little queasy, when you think of a society eating that stuff up and then going out and voting. And a lot of them star Leni Riefenstahl, who went on to be Hitler’s filmmaker, of course– and later to spend her life photographing noble savages in Africa. So it’s not that far from the idea of pitting yourself against the mountain in a personal Gotterdammerung to the idea of engulfing the world in a racial war that ends with fire for everybody.
So, is Herzog racist? He comes out of a questionable tradition, certainly. But unlike Riefenstahl, who glamorized appalling ideas, Herzog brings you into the thick of them, forces you to experience them and ask yourself questions about them– who, after all, comes out of Aguirre wanting to be Aguirre? Who thinks Fitzcarraldo’s triumph, such as it is, was remotely worth the madness of attempting it? And who, precisely, goes to a Herzog film expecting an accurate lesson from history as opposed to a powerful impressionistic experience of life at its most desperate and extreme?

JD

Having seen Rescue Dawn, I think this guy’s argument is a mess. That said, I’m curious to know if NYCBusybody would be willing to extend the same one-side-of-the-story-is-sufficient perspective to the films of Michael Moore.

Geoff

It seems like a valid argument. And The Rape of Nanking…some seriously fucked up stuff. I’ve read some books about it and boy do schools like to gloss over that situation. I’ve even had teachers tell me they are still unconvering horrific details of the atrocities.

BurmaShave

D.Z., we beat ourselves. I actually agree with everything else you said though.
Also, anyone who remembers the speech in AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD given by the Inca prince who has become a slave knows that Herzog is not a racist.

caslab

Lumping Americans in with the French situation in Vietnam is a gross oversimplification . . .
But there is a good point that MAGGA really highlighted . . . that the kind of warfare in Vietnam . . . the kind that continues today in Iraq . . . has a devastating effect on the civilian population . . . and we barely even consider . . .
Everyone is appropriately solemn about our military losses, but when the heavy civilian losses in Iraq are mentioned . . . there’s a collective shrug . . . a “Well, what can you do?” . . . without an understanding that those losses have serious repercussions on the ground . . .
At the end of the day, I think that would make for a more interesting . . . and timely . . . film, particularly since Herzog has already made this thing in documentary form.
Still interested in checking it out though.

BurmaShave

casla, I think unfortunately part of that is that the left bandies about extreme overestimation of the civilian casualties, routinely saying 650,000, which greatly reduces the credibility. Not to minimize the civilian deaths. Also, where was the indignation for the hundreds of thousands killed by Hussein?

Mgmax, le Corbeau

“but when the heavy civilian losses in Iraq are mentioned . . . there’s a collective shrug”
But a lot less of one than went on about Saddam’s hundreds of thousands of state murders during his regime.
Or will go on about the civil war when we withdraw.

kadoogan

BurmaShave: “Also, where was the indignation for the hundreds of thousands killed by Hussein?”
There was a lot of indignation in late 2002-early 2003. It’s one of the arguments proponents of the war used to justify our invasion. That said, a study came out about three years ago saying that Iraqis are being murdered at a faster clip than during Saddam’s reign.

giantman

Isn’t taking a side (or choosing a perspective) inherently racist?
I really grow tired of the way we, as a society, throw the word racist around without thought or consideration. There can be no doubt that racism itself, exists and is a horrible abomination against humanity, but we run the risk of reducing it to an expression of profanity and nothing more.
I haven’t seen Rescue Dawn myself and so cannot argue one way or the other as to its racist tone, but I suspect that this is once again someone with an axe to grind, lobbing the word around to make their own point.

caslab

Why is this a black-and-white issue?
Why is it we can only care about the civilian deaths while Saddam was in power OR the ones that happened after America stepped in?
Why is the knee-jerk reaction a political one?
The point I found interesting . . . more in MAGGA’s comment than in the original article . . . is that the modern American form of warfare . . . devastating and removed . . . HAS consequences beyond “Mission Accomplished” . . . has a serious effect on the local populations . . . that accounts for the horrible situation in Iraq right now . . .
It’s not meant to be a political point beyond the fact that it’s a point that’s being ignored in the “No blood for oil!” vs. “Fight them on their own soil” debate we’re STILL having since 2003 . . .

bmcintire

Beale is apparently one to gloss over the details of the film to find inherent racism. The fact that we had already been leading secret bombing campaigns is revealed (both to us and to Dieter’s character) when he is thrown in with American POWs who have already been there for years. He was of the belief that his secret mission was the one of the first. And Herzog is not going into villages, showing the general populace of Laos as barbaric. These are guys running a hidden prison camp, for Chrissakes! And as he so eloquently put it, they had reason to be pissed off, treating their captives as less than human. What did he want? Hogan’s Heroes in southeast Asia? Idiot.

LookingGlassSelf

“Comparing us to the French colonials is certainly the richest piece of crap in this piece.”
I don’t see what would be wrong with such a comparison. Wasn’t it the U.S. Government which completely abandoned its anticolonial stance in the 1950s by giving substanstial military and economic assistance to the French and basically took over the latter’s role after the French defeat?

Bocephus

There is really nothing to argue about.
Herzog. Always. Knows. Best.

Hallick

I can easily imagine the same kind of film being made about prisoners of war in a place like Abu Ghraib and watching the people on each side of this debate here suddenly trade sides thanks to their personal politics.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but am I wrong for assuming Herzog is simply using the Vietnam war as a springboard to get into some other more general aspect of human nature and not simply making a movie about the war? If I’m right, then Beale is being silly.
He’s probably right that we still haven’t come to terms with our involvement in Southeast Asia, but I think he’s picking on the wrong guy for it.

Mgmax

Herzog is his own cracked self as an artist, and one of the things that means is that when he makes a movie about people at the extremities of existence and civilization, he doesn’t make sure everything’s PC like a good corporate artist would; he doesn’t give a shit about equal time for the aboriginal viewpoint, he’s interested in the extreme experience of his crazed characters, to which the natives are a kind of prop. Is he racist, then? That seems an incredibly simplistic and reductionist way of ending, rather than asking, any questions about his art, since racism means automatic dismissal and ostracism in our society.

Part of 19th century Romanticism was rebellion against Enlightenment and rationality, admiration for the savage, a quest for the “authentic” pre-civilized spirit of various peoples. Is that racist? It certainly can be. Nazism came out of a desire to recreate the supposed pure, pre-Christian German soul in a society cleansed of you-know-who. But there are many gradations. To take one example– would you regard mountain climbing as racist? The idea sounds preposterous. But mountain climbing was essentially a Romantic invention– authentic man against the abyss. And there are 1920s German mountain films that fetishize the self-destructively heroic side of mountain climbing in a way that starts to make you a little queasy, when you think of a society eating that stuff up and then going out and voting. And a lot of them star Leni Riefenstahl, who went on to be Hitler’s filmmaker, of course– and later to spend her life photographing noble savages in Africa. So it’s not that far from the idea of pitting yourself against the mountain in a personal Gotterdammerung to the idea of engulfing the world in a racial war that ends with fire for everybody.

So, is Herzog racist? He comes out of a questionable tradition, certainly. But unlike Riefenstahl, who glamorized appalling ideas, Herzog brings you into the thick of them, forces you to experience them and ask yourself questions about them– who, after all, comes out of Aguirre wanting to be Aguirre? Who thinks Fitzcarraldo’s triumph, such as it is, was remotely worth the madness of attempting it? And who, precisely, goes to a Herzog film expecting an accurate lesson from history as opposed to a powerful impressionistic experience of life at its most desperate and extreme?

But a lot less of one than went on about Saddam’s hundreds of thousands of state murders during his regime.

Or will go on about the civil war when we withdraw.

lookingglasself

“Comparing us to the French colonials is certainly the richest piece of crap in this piece.”

I don’t see what would be wrong with such a comparison. Wasn’t it the U.S. Government which completely abandoned its anticolonial stance in the 1950s by giving substanstial military and economic assistance to the French and basically took over the latter’s role after the French defeat?

SpinDozer

‘the idea that all of Vietnam was fighting a war of national liberation against us is absurd.’
After the French withdrawal, the Vietnamese had their fill of war and would not believe Uncle Ho’s ceaseless chatter promoting so-called ‘national liberation’ against the United States. It wasn’t until Ho launched his Weapons of Mass Destruction PR campaign that the Vietnamese would finally show resolve; initiating their war on terror with pre-emptive imaginary torpedo strikes on pleasure cruisers Maddox and Turner Joy. Years later, Burston Marsteller would recommend the establishment of Ng√É∆í√Ç¬†y gi√É¬°√Ç¬∫√Ç¬£i ph√É∆í√Ç¬≥ng, or ‘Liberation Day’ commemorating the fall of Saigon in order to undermind prevalent theories that it was ‘all about oil’.
You’re gonna hafta work a lot harder to take the ‘most repulsive conservative moron’ title, the competition’s, well, very repulsive and stupid. Ignorance alone will not succeed.

Mgmax, le Corbeau

“You’re gonna hafta work a lot harder to take the ‘most repulsive conservative moron’ title, the competition’s, well, very repulsive and stupid. Ignorance alone will not succeed.”
The hardest part is seeing the everyday examples of grace and class like this coming from the other side.

The Movie Man

I’m thinking CJ is closest.Maybe, just maybe Herzog is interested in capturing a very singular, specific experience about humans pushed to very punishing extremes (you know, sort of his pet theme) without making any major statements about race or politics.
But I forgot, everything is racist, and politically offensive. I haven’t seen it but I assume Ratatouille is classist. I mean, come on, its a rat in a fancy restaurant!

SpinDozer

But I forgot, everything is racist, and politically offensive.
Would you be saying the same thing if the hero was an innocent Laotian accidently swept up in Operation Phoenix? Tortured by brutal white american youths? Jess askin.

SpinDozer

‘The hardest part is seeing the everyday examples of grace and class like this coming from the other side.’
Well Miss Manners, tell you what, we can go back in history and have a look at the po’ lil’ victims of bad ole lefties and see what the percentage of times you have been abused without provocation. For every time you have been stomped on, you have earned it 3 or 4 times. Scuttle back under your rock.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but am I wrong for assuming Herzog is simply using the Vietnam war as a springboard to get into some other more general aspect of human nature and not simply making a movie about the war? If I’m right, then Beale is being silly.

He’s probably right that we still haven’t come to terms with our involvement in Southeast Asia, but I think he’s picking on the wrong guy for it.

Mgmax

“You’re gonna hafta work a lot harder to take the ‘most repulsive conservative moron’ title, the competition’s, well, very repulsive and stupid. Ignorance alone will not succeed.”

The hardest part is seeing the everyday examples of grace and class like this coming from the other side.

corey3rd

When is Herzog going to turn the Stanford Prison Experiment into a reality show?

BurmaShave

You’re all mad. You wouldn’t dare speak so openly if Kinski were alive.

BurmaShave

SpinDozer: After the French withdrawal, the Vietnamese had their fill of war and would not believe Uncle Ho’s ceaseless chatter promoting so-called ‘national liberation’ against the United States. It wasn’t until Ho launched his Weapons of Mass Destruction PR campaign that the Vietnamese would finally show resolve; initiating their war on terror with pre-emptive imaginary torpedo strikes on pleasure cruisers Maddox and Turner Joy. Years later, Burston Marsteller would recommend the establishment of Ng√É∆í y gi√É¬°√Ç¬∫√Ç¬£i ph√É∆í√Ç¬≥ng, or ‘Liberation Day’ commemorating the fall of Saigon in order to undermind prevalent theories that it was ‘all about oil’.
Makes no sense. I get what you’re trying to do here, but it doesn’t work at all. Very, very inane. Verging on retarded.

Mgmax, le Corbeau

If Herzog’s going to remake his documentaries as fiction films, where’s the fiction version of God’s Angry Man? (Alas, would have been perfect for the late George C. Scott….)

Mgmax

If Herzog’s going to remake his documentaries as fiction films, where’s the fiction version of God’s Angry Man? (Alas, would have been perfect for the late George C. Scott….)

SpinDozer

‘Makes no sense. I get what you’re trying to do here, but it doesn’t work at all. Very, very inane. Verging on retarded.’
Said The man who claimed ‘the idea that all of Vietnam was fighting a war of national liberation against us is absurd.’

BurmaShave

I only mean absurd in the sense that it’s laughable, ignorant and untrue. A child’s view of history at best. Extremely naive. You can be wrong about some things you know, like history.

SpinDozer

‘I only mean absurd in the sense that it’s laughable, ignorant and untrue. A child’s view of history at best. Extremely naive. You can be wrong about some things you know, like history.’
Oh, well, if that’s all you meant. You have certainly established that you are ‘extremely naive’ and have a numbskull’s view of history. Which means you are a natural born right wing moron; laughable, ignorant & not afraid to lie.

SpinDozer

Before you wail me with more of your rapier wit, perhaps you can explain why “Comparing us to the French colonials is certainly the richest piece of crap in this piece. I don’t dispute that we shouldn’t have been there, but the idea that all of Vietnam was fighting a war of national liberation against us is absurd.”
Otherwise, you look like some jerk-off that claims the civil war wasn’t about slavery and ridicules those who think it is.
Your statements are the ones which defy logic, the historical record and scholarship from about 72 (at least) onward.